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B.C. school districts might have to chip in for seismic upgrades

Province wants districts with excess cash to pay up to half the cost of capital projects

Education minister Peter Fassbender insists the government has not backed away from its seismic upgrading commitments. File photo.

Photograph by: Ric Ernst
, PNG

B.C. school districts have been put on notice that they might be required to pay as much as half the cost of capital projects, including seismic upgrades.

Vancouver schools need $900 million in seismic upgrades, but they have almost no cash in their capital account, Vancouver school board chairwoman Patti Bacchus said.

In Richmond, the school board recently sold the site of the former Steveston secondary school after several years of trying. Trustees there planned to use the money to build a new school in their city centre, where demand is high. But now, the $42 million may be redirected to pay for some of the city’s other school projects, including 23 schools that need to be updated for earthquake safety.

The news comes on the heels of a B.C. auditor general report last week that criticized the provincial government for not being prepared for a catastrophic earthquake that could claim lives and cause billions of dollars in damage, as well as an 8.2-magnitude earthquake in Chile this week.

Richmond school board chairwoman Donna Sargent said she is upset by the letter to school superintendents from Rob Wood, deputy minister of education, which said school districts would have to pay as much as 50 per cent of capital projects, if they have the money.

“We are doing all we can just to keep our operating budget going and now they want us to raise funds for building schools,” Sargent said. “If they’re going to now say that the safety of children in regard to seismic is fully on our shoulders, that’s irresponsible. Why are they putting it on our shoulders when we have no capability of raising funds?”

Education minister Peter Fassbender insists the government has not backed away from its seismic upgrading commitments and that it will continue to approve projects based on assessed need and districts’ priority lists, not based on which districts have excess cash.

“This will be done on a case-by-case basis. If a school district has cash surpluses, we will be asking them to contribute up to half of a project’s cost,” Fassbender said. “It’s not going to affect their operating grants — they’re not going to have to take it out of their existing operating grants. If there is a district that doesn’t have any cash balances, then we will continue under the same process with provincial funding as we have in the past.”

In the letter, Wood said the move is part of a “cash management strategy” introduced in this year’s budget to use excess cash being held by public sector agencies.

“For school districts, this involves cost sharing major capital projects that are priorities for both government and school districts. By doing so, government is able to reduce the amount of borrowing required to fund capital projects and at the same time make progress toward the long-term goal of gradually reducing these cash balances,” the letter states.

The cost-sharing does not apply to projects that already have project agreements, unless the project is going over budget, the letter says.

Of 317 schools identified since 2001 as being in need of seismic upgrades, 104 have not yet been approved for upgrades, 57 have been approved but do not yet have project agreements in place, 16 are in progress and 140 have been completed.

More than $2 billion has been spent or earmarked so far, with an anticipated further $600 million needed to fix the remaining 104 projects, according to ministry of education figures.

“Where boards of education may have previously designated funds for operating or capital priorities, these priorities will need to be reassessed,” the letter states. “This may result in a board having to shift funds from a previously approved school district priority to a major capital project to be cost shared with government.”

Sargent said there are 23 schools in Richmond that need seismic upgrades and the city also needs a second elementary school in the Hamilton area and another in the downtown core — both are areas where population growth has been significant.

“The elephant in the room is that we’re not responsible for building schools. The ministry of education has always been responsible, but the capital funding has not been coming at all. It’s been on a freeze for five to seven years, where very rarely would they approve a capital project,” Sargent said. “I think it’s irresponsible for the minister to say they’re not going to fund schools period. We’re not land barons and we’re not a business. It took a huge amount of work to just sell Steveston — years and years — in fact the ministry put us on freeze for five years.”

Fassbender said he is not encouraging districts to sell schools.

“If they have surplus facilities and they have determined they’re going to be closing schools, then as part of their overall fiscal plan, part of that may mean disposition of a particular site or land that they acquired years ago that is no longer necessary because population increases haven’t happened or have shifted,” Fassbender said. Bacchus said the Vancouver school board has no cash reserves, and yet only about one-third of the city’s schools have been upgraded.

“We might have a few hundred thousand in the bank from doing a seismic upgrade, but that would carry over to the next seismic upgrade,” Bacchus said. “They committed to fund seismic upgrades. It has always been the rule that government paid for capital projects. To me this is a whopping broken promise.

“The best case is that this causes delays and slows things down. The worst case is that they only fund projects in districts that have money.”

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